Spanish Summer: Flavor

This evening I overheard my oldest niño ask Suegra if she wanted some candy.

¿Quieres dulces?

¿De qué son? De mango? (What kind are they? Mango?)

He shook his head.

“No, tienen otro flavor.”

(For non-Spanish speakers): His reply was funny but also shows he has intuitively learned some Spanish grammar rules. He was trying to say, “No, they have another flavor”, but instead of the word “sabor” for “flavor”, he made up his own word “flavor” (Pronounced “flah-voor” rather than “flay-ver”). Though it isn’t correct, this was a good guess! Many English words ending in “-or” are easily converted to Spanish by keeping the spelling the same and just pronouncing them differently. (For example: actor, doctor, pastor.) “Flavor” just isn’t one of them!

I love it! This is the kind of stuff one sees on El Show de Cristina all the time–English-infused Spanish.

I can picture my Gabe saying “flah-voor” too. Yesterday, he was speaking with his mamá (in English) and he seemed to get stuck on the word for watch/clock in English, so he just used “reloj”, but not without first replacing the hard/dry Spanish “R” with the curl-the-tongue “R” so as to make it sound like an actual English word.